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Monday, November 16, 2015

Paris, Balcombe Street and unusual US donors

The Islamists in Paris and the IRA in London - they're just as bad as each other, writes Ruth Dudley Edwards

1Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams

On Friday night, Gerry Adams complained on Twitter about his garrulous
teddy bears. "For such a quiet un when he talks Ted talks a lot. Tom
never stops. Talking that is." And then he heard about the Paris
carnage.

"The deplorable attacks tonight in Paris
are to be condemned," he tweeted. "My thoughts at this time are with
those killed or injured."

At a Sinn Fein conference in Dublin in May
1998, four men just released from prison appeared on the platform and
were presented to the audience by Adams.

As they raised their clenched fists and
grinned joyously, these celebrities, known to the public as the Balcombe
Street Gang, were given, said An Phoblacht, "a tumultuous welcome which
lasted for 10 minutes of foot-stamping, applause, cheers and tears".

It was personally a sweet moment for the
triumvirate who ran and still run the Provisional republican movement,
for among the four was Hugh Doherty, brother of Pat. Mary Lou McDonald's
predecessor as Sinn Fein vice-president, Pat Doherty would become MP
for West Tyrone in May 2002 and be named under parliamentary privilege
in the House of Commons as a member of the IRA Army Council.

Those Sinn Fein called "our Balcombe Street
heroes" had been in jail because of their role in a six-man IRA unit
terrorising London over 14 months in the mid-1970s. Their bombing and
shooting campaign aimed at civilians involved 40 explosions, the murder
of 35, and the maiming and traumatising of hundreds.

Since they wanted to kill without dying
themselves, the suffering they caused was not quite on the scale of
Paris, but they were driven by the same fanaticism, nihilistic hatred
and absence of human feeling as the Islamist gunmen in Paris on Friday.

The exploits for which they were celebrated by Sinn Fein just 17 years ago included hurling bombs into busy restaurants.

When Ross McWhirter, a co-founder of the
Guinness Book of Records, offered a £50,000 reward for information
leading to their arrest and conviction, Doherty and his colleague Harry
Duggan drove to McWhirter's house, where Duggan murdered him in front of
his wife.

Spotted by police in December 1975 as they
fired into yet another restaurant, they were cornered in Balcombe
Street, burst into a council flat and took the residents hostage. During
most of the six days negotiating with the police, the four refused food
for themselves and their prisoners.

They were the only IRA terrorists to be
given a whole-life tariff, but they were released under the Good Friday
Agreement, described by our would-be Taoiseach Gerry Adams as "our
Nelson Mandelas", and embraced by our would-be President, Martin
McGuinness.

One of the achievements of that unit was
blowing up oncologist Professor Gordon Hamilton-Fairley, who was passing
by the car of his neighbour, Conservative MP Sir Hugh Fraser, husband
of Lady Antonia Fraser, when the bomb underneath went off. This was a
lucky break for Sinn Fein, as Fraser was about to drive his young house
guest to her art-appreciation course. Killing John F Kennedy's daughter
Caroline might have made fundraising in America quite a challenge.

In New York, at the $500-a-plate Friends of
Sinn Fein dinner on November 6, Adams celebrated 20 years of
fundraising, blamed the Irish and British governments for using spooks
to damage Sinn Fein, praised Irish-America for financing the Easter
Rising and thanked it for all its work in helping the party's electoral
chances. The main donors now are not the glitterati we remember from the
early days: these days, the big benefactors are the slightly odd combo
of a trade union and a few construction companies.

Pat Donaghy of Structure Tone and Favour
Royal (which have given $120,000 over the years), is also from Tyrone,
where Favour Royal owns a huge property. Structure Tone is doing very
well, despite the hiccup in 1999 when it pleaded guilty to corruption
charges over bid-rigging for a $500m contract and paid $10m in fines. He
was in the place of honour beside his good friend Adams. Sinn Fein,
Adams promised the guests, "will never let you down".

24 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Facebook user is arrested for posting message PRAISING Paris attacks and Jihadi John and claiming Manchester will be next

The post surfaced on Sunday afternoon for around 45 minutes A 21-year-old from Todmorden, West Yorkshire, was arrested this morningIt read: 'WE ARE ISIS, THIS IS OUR TIME NOW. Keep your eyes on Manchester, AALUUACKHBAAR! Rip jihadi john'